Prof. Rajender (Raj) S. Varma (H -Index 96) was born in India (Ph.D., Delhi University 1976). After postdoctoral research at Robert Robinson Laboratories, Liver-pool, UK, he was faculty member at Baylor College of Medicine and Sam Houston State University prior to joining US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1999 with affiliation at Palacky University, Olomouc, Czech Republic (2014). He has over 45 years of experience in management of multi-disciplinary technical programs and is extensively involved in sustainable aspects of chemistry that includes, development of environmentally benign methods using alternate energy input using microwaves, ultrasound, photochemistry and mechano-chemistry and efficient technologies for the sustainable remediation of contaminants in the environment. Lately, he has focused on greener approaches to assembly of nanomaterials and sustainable applications of magnetically retrievable nano-catalysts in benign media. Dr. Varma has received numerous awards: Office of Research and Development (ORD) Sustainability Award (2015) from US EPA; Silver Medal for Superior Service-EPA for outstanding scientific and leadership contributions establishing EPAas a pioneering organization in Green Chemistry (2013), Visionary of the Year Award -Green Technology for Environment (2009), among others. He is on editorial advisory board of several international journals and has published over 465 scientific papers and awarded 16 US Patents, 8 books, 27 book chapters and 3 encyclopedia contributions with over ~ 31,000 citations.

Professor S. Bhattacharya did Ph.D. from Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA (Advisor: Prof. Robert. A. Moss) in 1988. From 1988 to 1991 he worked as Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA (Prof. Har Gobind Khorana, Nobel Laureate) and in 1991 he joined as Assistant Professor in Organic Chemistry division, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India where he was promoted as Professor in 2001. He served as Chairman of department of Organic Chemistry, Indian Institute of Science from 2012 to 2015 and since April 22, 2015 he is Director and Senior Professor, Director’s Research Unit, Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science (IACS), Kolkata. India.

He has received numerous excellence awards such as
Ranbaxy Research Award, Pharmaceutical Sci., Ranbaxy Science Foundation 2013
Elected Fellow of the World Academy of Sciences 2012
TWAS Prize, The World Academy of Sciences, Trieste, Italy 2010
J. C. Bose National Fellowship, Department of Science & Technlogy 2008
Elected Fellow of Indian National Science Academy 2007
G.D. Birla Prize for Scientific Research, K.K. Birla Foundation 2007
Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar prize for the Chemical Sciences, CSIR 2003
National Bioscience Career Development Award, Department of Biotechnlogy 2002
Elected Fellow of Indian Academy of Sciences 2000
Swarnajayanti Fellowship, Department of Science & Technlogy 1998